iContact Review: Stay In Touch With Your Customers

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When it comes to choosing an email marketing service, where do you start? It’s tough for companies to separate themselves from the pack, but iContact seems to have done just that with their exceptional premier services. You pay extra for a personal advisor to make sure you’re on top of your email marketing game, so iContact’s major strength is probably best for larger volume senders and mid-size businesses. We’ve compiled a review of iContact’s, our #3 pick for Best Email Marketing Service Provider, key services, ease of use, pros and cons and pricing to help you decide if it’s the right company for you.

Review Overview

Customer Service & Reputation

Pricing Template Selection

Social Media Marketing

Autoresponder

List Segmentation

Spam Score

3.88/5

iContact has all the features you’ll want regardless of your business size. However, they charge extra fees for a number of common features you can find elsewhere for less with the same quality.

Key Features

Message Builder – easy drag and drop features in WYSIWYG templates

Message Coder – for users who like to get their hands dirty with HTML code

Subscriber and list management

List segmentation

Social media sharing with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

Multiple message and social media analytics and real-time tracking tools

Autoresponsers

Spam checking

Split A/B testing

Advanced segmentation

Premier Services

iContact’s premier services include all of their basic features plus some additional bells and whistles targeted for larger volume and more advanced needs. It’s unclear how much more you’ll pay for these services, since you’re required to contact customer service for pricing.

Advisory Services: A dedicated strategic advisor researches your competitors and industry, sets you up with a marketing plan and educational resources, and digs deep into your message analytics to boost your business’s ROI.

Large Sender Services: iContact gives you what you need to reach a larger audience, including a reliable sending infrastructure, support from a strategic advisor, comprehensive tracking, custom reports, advanced segmentation, and more.

Custom Design Services: iContact designers assist your design needs. You get access to footers, sign-up forms, subscription pages and more. Quick message services get iContact professionals to send emails for you whenever you are running short on time.

Data tracking, see who opens, clicks, and unsubscribes from your emails

Autoresponders

Social media management tools

Split A/B testing

No credit card required for free trial

No weekend customer support

Responsive landing pages not available with basic level

No internal survey support

RSS to email is limited and hard to use

Integration of software/apps is fairly limited

We’ve heard reports that their support system is not nearly as good as the competition (i.e. inexperienced support staff, long wait times, etc.)

Support community appears to be more of a “content blog” where people can post content on various topics completely unrelated to email marketing

Pricing

iContact fees are very competitive compared to other providers. Their pricing is based on the number of contacts per month, and you can pay monthly — no long-term contract is required. But you do receive a 15% discount on monthly pricing if you purchase their annual plan. They also provide a 20% discount for nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organizations (free account for North Carolina based nonprofits). For Premier services pricing, you have to call iContact.

Coupon Code

Is iContact Good?

Customer reviews we’ve compiled from the web are mixed. See what several real users have to say about their experiences with iContact.

Positive Reviews

We had used I-Contact in the past for about 10 years with great success and satisfaction when our company in 2013 decided to change over to another provider. We have given this provider a chance, but a variety of issues, poor support and ineffective training have resulted in us moving back to I-contact since the beginning of 2016. And what a pleasure this has been. We receive Account Management support on a monthly basis, we can submit design projects and we are being listened to and given sound advice. I for one am very pleased with being back at I-contact and I look forward to working with them for many years to come! – Bard V., G2 Crowd 3/16/2017

We used iContact as our default email marketing system. It was used primarily by the marketing department, but service would also use it to communicate to our database. Segmentation of our contact list 20K+ contacts, was easy to manage. The email editor was easy to use and customizable. – Anonymous, Trust Radius 7/7/2015

Negative Reviews

The price is a little steep. I understand that providing all the services costs money, but I wish it was more affordable. It’s a good thing that I don’t run the agency and make the purchasing decisions! I might lean towards a cheaper solution. If I could change something, I would add a width-changing feature to the blocks and sections. On one hand, it’s nice to have the stability of a locked-in width, but a dragging-with-mouse way to re-size the blocks would be convenient. – Doug V., G2 Crowd 3/16/2017

There are many similar email services to consider, and after my recent experience, I feel robbed by iContact and cannot recommend them to colleagues. – Peggy L., Trust Radius 2/3/2015

What’s Split A/B All About?

If you’re just starting out with email marketing or wondering what split A/B testing involves, iContact demonstrates the basics for you. And Amazon’s Developer Console has a great nuts and bolts explanation of just how A/B testing works.

Is iContact the Email Marketing Service For You?

What really sets iContact apart is their premier services. Very few services offer personal advisors who are dedicated not only to helping create a marketing plan, but who also are also dedicated to troubleshooting problems. iContact was among Deloitte’s Fast 500 up-and-coming companies back in 2011, but they don’t seem to be growing at the same rate these days. Still, it’s worth checking out iContact’s 30-day free trial our Email Marketing Services Reviews and see how iContact compares to the competition.

Amy grew up in England and in the early 1990's moved to North Carolina where she completed a bachelors degree in Psychology in 2001. Amy's personal interest in writing was sparked by her love of reading fiction and her creative writing hobby. Amy is currently self employed as a freelance writer and web designer. When she is not working Amy can be found curled up with a good book and her black Labrador, Jet.

If iContact couldn’t get any worse, they have taken it to a new level moving their customer support area to Salvador and try getting anyone to help you there. Seriously one pathetic company, save yourself the headache, go somewhere else.

iContact is getting a well-deserved reputation for shady billing practices, and my recent experience trying to get a refund for months of being overcharged bears this out. I’m very disappointed in iContact’s customer service, which is long on words and extremely short on results.

Bad service. Since week one I like to send emails and created a list. Immediately after paying, they disabled my auto responder and my list because I need permission to use my contact list after I collected them through a free high value book. I have to write on the free download book button that I will send them another free offer after I send the free book, even though they can cancel at any time. I disagreed with this option and they offered another option to send a request to them if they’d like to continue. But this never worked, instead nothing is working. And to cancel the contract is not possible. No service and you have to pay. Easy money making machine.

Having used several email marketing platforms over the years, I am setting up a new client on an email marketing program. I’ve spent a little time comparing features and was pretty intrigued by the features of iContact. Their site is full of useful information. Their templates seem to be first class and generally better than some of the other cookie-cutter ones out there – even if not, their design services and their HTML capabilities make them seem a bit ahead of the pack. Couple that with their Advisory Premium service, and free trial and I’m going give them a try. This review sealed the deal. Thanks for going into such depth on their product.